Business Journal

Home to one of the largest and most active naval aviation bases in the world, Santa Rosa County’s economy gets a major boost from businesses that cater to or work with the military. With hundreds of defense contractors, land available for development and a sizeable trained workforce, the county’s economic development office is making a push to get the word out that the county is at the “heart of a growing aerospace cluster.”

An area known for its blue-green waterways and rich ecosystems, Santa Rosa County is currently working on a project that could improve the quality of marine life — and perhaps economic development — for years to come. The county has been working with scientists at the Nature Conservancy since 2015 on the Pensacola East Bay Oyster Habitat Restoration Project — a multi-phase endeavor that’s being funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund.

Santa Rosa County sits in the midst of a six-county area of Northwest Florida that has the highest concentration of military retirees in the U.S., providing a trained and ready workforce. There are more than 31,000 military retirees in Santa Rosa alone — and approximately 100,000 military veterans in Santa Rosa and neighboring counties combined.

People

As an attorney in Atlanta, Kim Rivers discovered an appetite for forging big deals that she found to be in relatively short supply upon moving back to Tallahassee, where she had served as a student body president at FSU. She thought about trading Florida’s capital city for a metropolitan environment, but saw Tallahassee as an ideal place to raise her son. Today, she is still making deals while working to make Tallahassee an even better place to live.

Sponsored by Matthews & Jones LLP

Matthews & Jones serves clients throughout Northwest Florida and in Georgia and Alabama. Founding partner Dana Matthews works with developers on projects from concept to completion, assisting them with everything from land acquisition to closings with end users.